Overview: The more power that rests with the people, the less there is for minority global actors to wield. This remains true whether or not the people are right or wrong. It’s still the best place for meaningful influence to reside.

Verdict: As noted, this remains true whether or not the people are right or wrong, because it’s still the safest place for real power to reside. Unfortunately, the direction of travel is the opposite way.

Thus The Living Vote describes a uniquely new mechanism to significantly extend the engagement of voters and to moderate the unlimited power our governments can wield. Unlike the usual outcomes from other more proportional systems, coalitions will not be necessary.

Having now read this insightful book twice through, back-to-back, I can honestly attest to the fact that The Living Vote describes what we should be doing and how to achieve it in a way that is both easily digestible and most definitely a most astutely written, astutely grounded, and impassioned new prose.

As I am sure we all know by now, when a government has unlimited power is becomes known as an autocracy, which is a form of government in which one ruler has absolute control and decision-making power in all matters of state and over all the country’s people.

Ergo, in every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

By virtue of the first, the prince or magistrate enacts temporary or perpetual laws, and amends or abrogates those that have been already enacted. By the second, he makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. By the third, he punishes criminals, or determines the disputes that arise between individuals. The latter we shall call the judiciary power, and the other simply the executive power of the state.

The political liberty of the subject is a tranquillity of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Again, there is no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with violence and oppression.

There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.

In closing, what author David Allen sets out to do here on The Living Vote: Voting Reform Is the Biggest Issue of Our Time. Get That and Everything Changes. is openly bring forth en mass of new thoughts, repopulated thoughts and, at its height, propose a new way of thinking; a new way of doing; and, ultimately, as aforementioned, open our eyes to a uniquely new mechanism to significantly extend the engagement of voters and to moderate the unlimited power our governments can wield.

For as Allen himself says, This book is about protecting our freedom and democracy. To achieve that we need to bring the democratic process closer to the people by changing the structure of the UK House of Commons, and the electoral mechanism we should adopt to populate it. It is not about House of Lords Reform of other constitutional issues, though these also need to be addressed.

About The Author: David Allen is a political innovator and commentator based in Tonbridge and Sweden. Looking at problems from unusual perspectives often reveals alternative solutions.

Official Book Purchase Link